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Gay Marriage

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Society appreciates those who have fashioned families because of the social stability and productivity such groups supply. A family may be expressed as a part of co-dependent and cooperating persons, connected together over time by strong social and emotional bonds. Its central purpose is to support the social, mental, physical, emotional development, and well being of each of its members. Same-sex couples form the same kind of family structures. It is now time to support same-sex relationships in the same way opposite-sex relationships are supported therefore by allowing the opportunity of legal marriage.

Some religious groups have now elbowed their way into legislative debates and also into court cases, this is really not a religious matter. Legal marriage for anyone, whether they are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, is a matter of civil law, a contract that uses legal commitments and benefits for a couple. Religious bodies instead offer ceremonial services, which do not, and should never, hold the power of law.

Marriage is a symbol of social maturity. Legal marriage was before denied, as a means of social control, to black people in the early years of the United States. It was also applied to reject the humanity of an entire class of people.

Interracial marriage was illegal in 13 U.S. states until 1967 when it was finally set right in Loving v. Virginia. This is why the objection against same-sex marriage seems the same to those used against black people; for instance, the idea that allowing marriage would somehow weaken the institution of marriage.

To deny the right to marriage is to keep lesbian and gay families in a permanent position of childishness, one being subject to the whims and rules of the “parental” state law. This denial refuses to recognize the authenticity of a same-sex household as a valid family.

No matter how long the relationship, nor how deep the commitments, as long as same-sex couples are unable to marry,

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